


Make The Most Of The Minutes

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Prompt Fills [72]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Partying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:02:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28919505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: At a mysterious party on an exotic alien planet, Yaz finds herself overwhelmed by it all: the noise, the people, the aliens… and something more, too. Being with the Doctor is different to everything she’s ever known; better than she’s ever known; so why is she so afraid? And how can she try to explain herself to a Time Lady who seems unable to cope with her own emotions, let alone anyone else’s?
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Yasmin Khan & Ryan Sinclair
Series: Prompt Fills [72]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/585397
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	Make The Most Of The Minutes

**Author's Note:**

> An expansion of [this drabble.](https://universe-on-her-shoulders.tumblr.com/post/625635672961712128/59-i-think-youre-just-afraid-to-be-happy)

The invitation had been alluring. A large, embossed rectangle of something akin to cardboard, shimmering with suffused glitter around the edges as they’d turned it to and fro in the amber glow of the console room. It promised a party unlike any other, and that had been right; as they’d arrived on a remote human outpost on a lush, verdant planet, they’d found a mansion adorned with expensive decorations, packed with humans and aliens of every variety, and staffed almost entirely with blue-skinned humanoid locals, whose ethereal beauty had made Yaz feel acutely self-conscious as they’d plied her with strange green drinks and what would have been called canapes on Earth. Fire-breathers and acrobats had tumbled through rooms dressed in golden clothing adorned with glittering gems, and everywhere wealth and opulence had oozed forth, underlining to them that their mysterious host – whoever they might be – was clearly the richest person this side of the solar system.

And yet as the night wore on, Yaz found herself becoming irritated by the Doctor’s preoccupation with discovering who had invited them. Couldn’t they just enjoy themselves? Couldn’t they simply be grateful to have been invited at all? As the Doctor launched into another diatribe about ulterior motives and deception and traps, Yaz snagged another drink from a passing waiter, knocking it back in several long sips as Ryan stared at her in confusion, visibly battling with himself as to whether to speak up about something or not.

“Thought you weren’t meant to drink?” he muttered at last. “Or does it not count if it’s alien?”

“It’s not _alcohol_ ,” Yaz countered, but she felt the same unsteadiness on her feet that she’d felt at sixteen, when she and her cousins had split a bottle of White Lightning in the park one Saturday afternoon, before staggering home to face their parents’ wrath. “It’s just…”

Ryan rolled his eyes, and that grated on her too. Why shouldn’t she enjoy herself? Why shouldn’t she have fun just this once? She was always dependable, pragmatic Yaz, good in a crisis, steady and staid. She wanted to enjoy herself, and so she twisted away from him and allowed the gyrating party guests to sweep her away, across the ground floor and up the stairs onto a mezzanine level. The music here was louder; Yaz could feel it pulsing through the floor like a heartbeat, vibrating through the soles of her shoes, and she reached up and shook her hair free of its scrunchie, allowing herself to get lost in the beat. She moved in time with the aliens and humanoids around her, her head spinning from whatever it was that she’d consumed, and the heady, full-body thrum of the dance tracks pounding from concealed speakers and the intoxicants contained in the drink combined into one alluring rush, her thoughts racing away from her as her very identity ceased to matter. _Nothing_ mattered outside of this place and this beat; she felt herself slip into a trance-like state of mindlessness, ceasing to worry about her family or her job or any of the mundanity she faced on Earth; ceasing to worry about Ryan or Graham or the way the Doctor looked at her with a level of concern that Yaz despised.

She thought of the Doctor as she danced; pictured the two of them dancing together like this, and she laughed aloud at the mere thought. The Doctor didn’t dance, and she certainly didn’t allow her composure to slip enough to dance like this; wild, untamed; not so much dancing as allowing the music to move her. Despite this knowledge, Yaz wished the Doctor would allow some of that control to slip; wished she wouldn’t treat them all as though they were made of glass; wished… wished… wished…

She sucked in a fraught breath, her awareness snapping back to herself as she felt her consciousness flow back to her as she recalled, abruptly, who she was and where she was. Her head was spinning uncomfortably and she shook it hard, finding herself dizzy and disorientated, she stumbled back down the stairs, out through the wide double doors at the back of the main room, and out onto the terrace beyond. At the end of the terrace was a rolling expanse of lawn that undulated softly down to a shimmering sea, and Yaz staggered towards it, craving the sharp coldness the water would bring and hoping it would alleviate the pounding in her head and the feeling of the bass that still seemed to be reverberating in her back teeth. She felt unsteady on her feet and uncomfortable; she felt both euphoric and utterly miserable, and as she half-ran towards the unfamiliar stretch of sea, she clenched her hands into fists and tried to will herself back together.

Ryan had been right. Whatever had been in that drink, it had robbed her of the ability to think coherently. Her breathing was beginning to come in gasping pants, and as Yaz stumbled onto a wooden jetty that reached out over the water, she realised she was beginning to panic. The party had been too much, she understood that now; too much noise, too many people, too many not-people, too many sensations. Too much of the alien drink pulsing through her system; too much of everything.

Reaching the end of the jetty, Yaz sunk to the boards and stripped off her shoes, before sitting cross-legged and then lowering her feet into the water, which was tepid and wonderfully soothing. She thought for a moment about simply diving in, but this was an unknown planet and an unknown ocean; she was inebriated; she was confused; and she could only imagine the telling-off the Doctor would deliver afterwards. That was, if she wasn’t eaten by some kind of alien sea serpent first; she splashed her feet and wondered idly what might lay beneath her, hoping that it didn’t like the taste of slightly-sweaty Yorkshire lasses.

As the water swirled around her ankles and shins, she felt her head clear. Settling her hands on the wood of the pier, she leaned her head back and stared up at the unfamiliar stars, trying to shape them into patterns as the Ancient Greeks had once done with her own solar system; linking them into figures and beings and granting them names. It was hard to do here; the stars were more plenteous than she was used to, and it was so difficult to focus on them and attempt to join them together that she soon gave up and simply admired them.

“Penny for ‘em,” a voice said out of the darkness and Yaz jumped, swearing under her breath as the Doctor strolled out of the darkness with her boots dangling from one hand, her feet bare. “Mind if I join you?”

She didn’t wait for a response; she merely plonked herself down beside Yaz and stuck her feet into the sea. For several long minutes, she didn’t speak, and that frightened Yaz; if there was one thing the Time Lady could be relied upon to do, it was talk, usually nineteen to the dozen. But no, the Doctor remained silently, loosely swishing her feet back and forth in the water, and Yaz was on the verge of asking about sea serpents when the Doctor finally spoke.

“Yaz, you need to stop doing this,” she said quietly, as Yaz swirled her feet aimlessly in figure-eights. The muted sounds of the party they’d left occasionally drifted across the lawn to them, but other than that, they were completely alone out here; there were no distractions, no convenient things to point the Doctor’s attention towards; nothing Yaz could do to change the subject.

“Doing what?” Yaz asked with confusion. Her hair, loose and untamed, was caught by the wind; it eddied and danced around her face and brushed across the skin of her bare shoulders that her dress revealed. Perhaps it was the outfit that had thrown her, she reasoned; she was unused to feeling quite so _on display_ ; unused to being quite so exposed, not only to the cool air but also to the opinions of others on not only her body but on the clothes that partly concealed it. The dress was not explicit or clinging, and yet she still felt vulnerable; she yearned for the relative safety of her jacket and jeans.

As though reading her mind, the Doctor shrugged off her coat and reached over, casting it around Yaz’s shoulders in one unexpectedly fluid movement, her hand skimming down Yaz’s arm as she did so, and on impulse, Yaz took the Time Lady’s hand. To her surprise, the Doctor didn’t flinch away or wince; she squeezed Yaz’s hand instead, offering her a reassuring smile in the gloom.

“I haven’t done anything,” Yaz said in a small voice. “I don’t…”

“You were happy in there,” the Doctor told her, examining their intertwined fingers. “I saw you dancing; you didn’t care how you looked or who saw you, you were just having a good time. And then you panicked. Why?”

“It was just… busy,” Yaz mumbled, letting go of the Doctor’s hand and lowering her head so that her hair hung across her face like a curtain. “Hot. Claustrophobic.”

“No, it wasn’t,” the Doctor countered, but she didn’t sound angry or accusatory, only curious. “Did the drinks take you by surprise? They can be potent. I should have warned you.”

“Partly,” Yaz confessed.

“So, what was the other part?” the Doctor mused aloud, then continued: “Because to me, it seems like… I don’t know. Like you’re afraid to lose control and allow yourself to be happy.”

“I’m not!” Yaz said at once, shooting a sidelong glance at the Doctor. “I’m not, it’s just… I was just… the drinks… the music… it was loud…”

“I don’t blame you,” the Doctor said quietly, cutting off her panicked stammering. “The thought of losing control scares me as well.”

“You’re not scared of anything.”

“I’m scared of lots of things,” the Doctor said solemnly, looking up at the stars as Yaz had done minutes before. “Losing control. You lot getting hurt. Bees. Global warming. Broken mirrors.”

“But you’re…”

“I’m not brave, Yaz,” the Doctor admitted, keeping her gaze fixed on the sky as she spoke, and Yaz realised that the Doctor found this just as difficult to talk about as she did. “I’m just better at lying than you are.”

There was no accusation in her tone, no callousness or blame. It was a statement of fact; the Doctor had been around for millennia, Yaz knew, and she must have had ample practice at concealing how she felt.

“I was scared to be happy too, you know,” the Doctor continued. “For a long time, it frightened me because I thought… if I’m happy, it’s going to hurt so much more when it all gets ripped away. Because that’s how things tend to go in my life; people and things are taken away without warning, and just when I think I’m recovering… well, they tend to turn up again, all out of order. But I’m learning to move past it now. I’m trying to relax into moments and let myself enjoy them.”

“What happened?” Yaz asked curiously. “What changed?”

“You,” the Doctor admitted, reaching over and nudging her gently with an elbow. “You and Ryan and Graham. You changed things for me. You reminded me that it’s OK to have moments of happiness, and I don’t have to be sad and scared all the time. But after Gallifrey… after that, it’s been hard to find joy. It’s been hard to feel glad, when my people are dead, and the person who… the man who…” her voice cracked, and Yaz’s eyes widened. Such a display of emotion was uncommon for the Time Lady, and Yaz felt a frisson of fear at the vulnerability it conveyed, before chiding herself; the Doctor was not invulnerable, and nor should she be.

“What can we do?” Yaz asked softly, her heart aching at the thought of the Doctor hurting. “To help?”

“Sometimes I want to talk about it,” the Doctor admitted in a small voice. “My planet, and how it was. Sometimes I don’t. If I do want to talk about, could you maybe just… let me show off?”

“Let you show off?” Yaz echoed, a tinge of amusement to her tone; the Doctor tended to do nothing _but_ show off, and they loved her for it.

“Yeah, just… let me go on. Let me waffle. Let me talk about it; ask me questions; keep me talking?” the Doctor sighed. “It’s hard to explain, but when I’m remembering… I’m not thinking about how it is now. I’m not thinking about all my people, dead and gone. I’m not…” her voice broke again, and she lapsed into silence.

“We can do that,” Yaz said gently. “We can keep you talking. Not hard, really, is it?”

The Doctor flashed her a fleeting smile, but even in the gloom, Yaz could see that her eyes were wet with tears.

“I’m not scared to be happy,” Yaz said in a rush. “I’m just… scared that if I’m too complacent, I might forget where I’ve come from and what I’ve overcome to be here.”

They both knew she didn’t mean the other cadets at the police academy, her peers, or Sheffield.

“You can be happy while also being sad,” the Doctor said in a low voice that was thick with emotion. “You can evolve while being true to who you are; you can honour who you’ve been and choose who you want to be next. It doesn’t invalidate the past or what you’ve fought for if you laugh sometimes, or smile, or muck about with your mates. It means you’re growing. It means you’re healing.”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“Healing?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor let out a long breath. “I’m trying to, but I don’t know how successfully I’m managing it.”

“Let us help you with that.”

“Only if you’ll let me show you wonders so amazing you forget to be sad sometimes.”

“Deal,” Yaz said, extending her hand to the Doctor, who shook it solemnly.

“Good,” the Doctor said, nodding sagely, and then pushed away from the jetty and tugged Yaz into the sea with her, laughing as she did so.


End file.
